Taiebat, H. A. & Carter, J. P. (2002). Géotechnique 52, No.
1, 61–64
TECHNICAL NOTE
Bearing capacity of strip and circular foundations on undrained clay
subjected to eccentric loads
H . A . TA I E BAT
a n d J. P. C A RT E R

KEYWORDS: bearing capacity; clays; foundations; numerical
modelling and analysis.
INTRODUCTION
The bearing capacity of foundations has always been a subject
of major interest in soil mechanics and foundation engineering.
There is extensive literature dealing with this topic, from both
the theoretical and experimental standpoints. A list of prin-
cipal contributions to this subject can be found in Vesic (1973),
Chen & McCarron (1991), and Tani & Craig (1995). Recently,
Houlsby & Purzin (1999) investigated possible lower-bound and
upper-bound solutions to the problem of the bearing capacity of
a strip footing using a scaling procedure. A series of failure loci
were presented, which include both lower-bound and upper-
bound solutions. It was found that no exact solution exists for
the general cases of vertical moment and horizontal loading.
Because the normality condition is violated at the interface
between the footing and the soil, a unique failure surface may
no longer be defined, and the upper-bound or lower-bound
theorems may not be valid.
The objective of the current studies is to determine the shape
of the failure locus in (V, M ) space using the results of a finite
element study of this problem. Both strip and circular footings
are considered. The (V, M ) load case is significant, as it also
corresponds to footing problems in which the vertical load is
eccentrically applied.
DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM
Finite element modelling of the problem of the bearing
capacity of strip and circular footings under vertical load and
moment is described in this section. The footings rest on the
surface of a uniform homogeneous soil that deforms under
undrained conditions. The soil is assumed to obey the Tresca
failure criterion. It has a uniform undrained shear strength su
and an undrained Young’s modulus, Eu ¼ 300 su . A Poisson’s
ratio of í  0:5 (in practice í ¼ 0:49 to avoid numerical dif-
ficulties) was assumed for the soil to model the constant-volume
elastic response of the soil under undrained conditions. The
Young’s modulus for the foundations was set as Ef ¼ 1000Eu :
that is, the foundations are much stiffer than the soil, and
therefore they can be considered as effectively rigid.
The finite element code AFENA (Carter & Balaam, 1995)
was employed for the analyses of the foundations. The strip
footing was modelled using isoparametric quadrilateral plane
strain elements in both load-controlled and displacement-
controlled analyses. The circular footing was modelled using
three-dimensional wedge elements, which are equivalent to iso-
parametric brick elements. The analysis using wedge elements
was formulated following the ‘semi-analytical’ approach in
finite element modelling described by Zienkiewicz & Taylor
(1989). Details of this semi-analytical solution method may be
found in Taiebat (1999) and Taiebat & Carter (2001).
Manuscript received 26 April 2001; revised manuscript accepted l
November 2001.
Discussion on this paper closes 1 August 2002, for further details see
inside back cover.

Civil Engineering Department, University of Sydney.
61
The contact between the footings and the soil is unable to
sustain tension. A thin layer of ‘no-tension’ elements was used
under the foundation to model the interface. The separation of
the foundation and the soil is signalled by the occurrence of
tensile vertical stress in the interface elements. Immediately
after the separation no shear stress can be sustained in the
interface elements.
The geometries of the problems considered, as well as the
detailed dimensions of the elements in the near-field zone, are
presented in Fig. 1. The breadth on the strip footing and the
diameter of the circular footing are B and D respectively.
FINITE ELEMENT RESULTS
A series of finite element analyses of circular and strip
footings were performed to investigate the shape of the failure
envelope for the footings in the (V, M ) space. The predicted
failure envelopes are compared with the solutions obtained
using the lower- and upper-bound theorems of plasticity. The
lower-bound solutions used here satisfy equilibrium and do not
violate the yield criterion. However, some of the solutions may
not adhere strictly to all requirements of the lower-bound
theorem. For example, loss of contact at the footing–soil inter-
face implies that the normality principle is not always obeyed.
Therefore the term apparent lower bound is used for these
solutions, as suggested by Houlsby & Purzin (1999). The equa-
tion for the apparent lower-bound solutions proposed by
Houlsby & Purzin (1999) in V –M loading space is similar to
the equation derived from the application of the effective width
method, which is commonly used in the analysis of foundations
subjected to eccentric loading (e.g. Meyerhof, 1953; Vesic,
1973). In this method, the eccentric bearing capacity of a
foundation is assumed to be equivalent to the vertical bearing
capacity of another foundation with a fictitious effective area on
which the load is centrally applied.
Two-dimensional analyses
The failure envelope predicted by the two-dimensional finite
element analyses for a strip footing under both vertical load and
moment is presented in Fig. 2. Also shown in this figure are the
failure envelopes resulting from the apparent lower-bound and
apparent upper-bound solutions suggested by Houlsby & Purzin
(1999). The apparent lower-bound envelope suggested by
Houlsby & Purzin (1999) can be obtained from


V 2M
¼ (ð þ 2) 1  su (1)
A VB
where V is the vertical load, A is the area of the foundation,
and M is the moment applied to the foundation.
The load-controlled finite element method of analysis is
unable to predict the failure load when the ratio M=V is high.
However, the displacement-controlled method of analysis pro-
vides a failure load for all conditions. The predicted failure
points resulting from both methods of analysis are entirely
consistent to a high degree of accuracy. The deformed shape of
the soil and the strip foundation under an eccentric load is
shown in Fig. 3.
The predicted failure envelope is very close to the apparent
upper-bound solutions and also is in good agreement with the
62 TAIEBAT AND CARTER

No-tension
interface elements
Foundation

Soil

D
B

4B 4D

8B 8D

Strip foundation Circular foundation

Fig. 1. Geometry of the finite element mesh and details of the mesh in the near field

4
V/(Asu)

Apparent lower-bound solution

3
2-D finite element analyses, displacement-controlled
2-D finite element analyses, load-controlled
2 Apparent upper-bound solution (Houlsby & Purzin, 1999)

0
0 0·1 0·2 0·3 0·4 0·5 0·6 0·7 0·8
M/(ABsu)

Fig. 2. Failure loci for strip footing under eccentric loading

and moment is presented in Fig. 4. The failure envelope

obtained from the apparent lower-bound solutions is also pre-
sented in the same figure. For three-dimensional conditions, the
apparent lower-bound solutions have been obtained based on the
0 following considerations.
A circular foundation subjected to a vertical load applied
B/4 with an eccentricity e ¼ M=V can be regarded as an equivalent
fictitious foundation with a centrally applied load (Fig. 5), as
suggested by Meyerhof (1953) and Vesic (1973). In this case,
B/2 the area of the fictitious foundation, A9, can be calculated as
–3B/4 –B/2 –B/4 0 B/4 B/2 3B/4 0 1
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi

2
Fig. 3. Deformed shape of the soil and the strip footing under an D2@ 2e 2e 2e A
A9 ¼ arc cos  1 (2)
eccentric load 2 D D D

failure envelope obtained from the apparent lower-bound solu- The aspect ratio of the equivalent rectangular area can also be
tions for most of the loading range. approximated as the ratio of the line lengths b to l, as shown in
Fig. 5: that is,
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Three-dimensional analyses B9 b D  2e
The failure envelope predicted by the three-dimensional finite ¼ ¼ (3)
L9 l D þ 2e
element analyses for circular footings under both vertical load
 STRIP AND CIRCULAR FOUNDATIONS ON UNDRAINED CLAY 63
7

4
V/(Asu)

Apparent lower-bound solution

3
Three-dimensional finite element analyses

0
0 0·1 0·2 0·3 0·4 0·5 0·6 0·7
M/(ADsu)

Fig. 4. Failure loci for circular footing under eccentric loading

e = M/V
0
A′
e
L′ l D/4

D/2

–3D/4 –D/2 –D/4 0 D/4 D/2 3D/4

B′
b Fig. 6. Deformed shape of the soil and the circular footing under an
eccentric load
Fig. 5. Effective area of circular footings subjected to eccentric load

Therefore, in this case the shape factor for the fictitious
rectangular foundation is given by (Vesic, 1973)
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
DV  2M
îs ¼ 1 þ 0:2 (4)
DV þ 2M
Hence the bearing capacity of circular foundations subjected to
eccentric loading can be obtained from the effective width
method as
V ¼ îs A9(2 þ ð)su
Note that based on Vesic’s recommendation the shape factor
for circular footings under the pure vertical load is predicted
by equation (4) as îs ¼ 1:2. However, exact solutions for the
vertical bearing capacity of circular footings on uniform Tresca
soil (Shield, 1955; Cox, 1961) suggest the ultimate bearing
capacity of 5:69 Asu and 6:05 Asu for smooth and rough footings
respectively. Therefore the appropriate shape factors are actually
1·11 and 1·18 for smooth and rough footings, so that equation
(4) will give shape factors and hence bearing capacity values
that are in error by about 2–9%. On the other hand, the
ultimate load of V ¼ 5:7 Asu predicted by the finite element
procedure described here is very close to the exact solution for
a smooth footing. The thin layer of soil used under the founda-
tion has effectively resulted in a smooth interface between the
foundation and soil.
The failure envelope resulting from the effective width
method is compared with the failure envelope predicted by the
finite element analyses in Fig. 4. There is reasonable agreement
between the two failure envelopes.
A picture of the deformed mesh of the soil and the foundation
under the circular footing, in the plane of the applied moment,
provided by the finite element analysis, is presented in Fig. 6.
SUMMARY
The failure envelopes for strip and circular footings subjected
to vertical load and moment were obtained from finite element
analyses and from the simple lower-bound solutions based on
(5) the effective width method. Derivation of the upper-bound
solution for the problem of bearing capacity of foundations
subjected to combined vertical load and moment is complex.
However, comparison of the failure envelopes obtained in this
study shows that the effective width method, commonly used in
the analysis of foundations subjected to eccentric loading,
provides good approximations to the collapse loads for these
problems.
REFERENCES
Carter, J. P. and Balaam, N. P. (1995). AFENA: A finite element program
for the numerical analysis of problems in geotechnical engineering.
Centre for Geotechnical Research, The University of Sydney.
Chen, W. F. & McCarron, W. O. (1991). Bearing capacity of shallow
foundations. In Foundation engineering handbook (ed. H.-Y. Fang),
2nd edn, pp. 144–165. New York: Chapman & Hall.
Cox, A. D. (1961). Axially-symmetric plastic deformation in soil. II:
Indentation of ponderable soils. Int. J. Mech. Sci. 4, 371–380.
Houlsby, G. T. & Purzin, A. M. (1999). The bearing capacity of strip
footing on clay under combined loading. Proc. Roy. Soc. 455A,
893–916.
64 TAIEBAT AND CARTER
Meyerhof, G. G. (1953). The bearing capacity of foundations under
eccentric and inclined loads. Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. Soil Mech. Found.
Engng, Zurich 1, 440–445.
Shield, R. T. (1955). On the plastic flow of metal under conditions of
axial symmetry. Proc. Roy. Soc. 233A, 267–287.
Taiebat, H. T. (1999). Three-dimensional liquefaction analysis
of offshore foundations. PhD thesis, University of Sydney,
Australia.
Taiebat, H. T. & Carter, J. P. (2001). A semi-analytical finite element
method for three-dimensional consolidation analysis Comput. Geo-
tech. 28, 55–78.
Tani, K. & Craig, W. H. (1995). Bearing capacity of circular founda-
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Vesic, A. S. (1973). Analysis of ultimate loads of shallow foundations.
J. Soil Mech. Found. Div., ASCE 99, No. SM1, 45–73.
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